


Shellshock

by Altonym



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: After the Reaper War, Gen, post shepard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 05:47:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Altonym/pseuds/Altonym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The teenager who once sought refuge in the Citadel is all grown up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shellshock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kylenne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kylenne/gifts).



The viewscreen flickered to life, and suddenly the apartment was filled with the calming timbre of the Citadel News Bureau. Jen kept one eye on the screen as she brushed her hair.  
  
“ _-not foreseeable for the time being. Patrek Giodonnis, acting CEO, confirmed that there would be no more shipments to Asari space until the disagreement is resolved, prompting a bitter rejoinder in the Thessian Planetary Parliament from Matriarch Sethel, who has risen to prominence in recent weeks as a figurehead of the anti-reparation movement on the Asari homeworld._  
  
_The disagreement comes just a week ahead of the first public referendum on an official apology-_ “  
  
Jennifer glanced at the mirror, allowing herself to exhale tiredly, and started on make-up. The last couple of years had added a definite sense of age to her face, not in wrinkles per se but in her eyes, her occasional languor, her vanishing optimism. It was a welcome change, to be honest. She looked as she felt.  
  
The news was non-stop from Thessia these days – the so called Asari Question that had already begun to threaten the political stability of a wounded, rebuilding galaxy. As soon as the Citadel was back to serving as a Galactic capital and the day-to-day business of survival less pressing, it had started to hang over everyone’s heads. The Asari council seat had been suspended for the mean time, and voices across the galaxy (no less from the Asari themselves) called for some kind of admission of responsibility.  
  
The authorities on Thessia had known so much that might’ve helped. It was an issue Jennifer had to keep her heart away from, like so many personally affected by the war. Other issues, long dead issues, clung to the shadow of the Asari Question. Terra Firma were polling high with a shellshocked human population inclined to shrink in on itself, the Turians had begun to view it as a profound betrayal, something akin to military desertion. Irune and Kahje were both jostling for council seats, and the Asari public who had watched their planet burn were in a state of utter fury.  
  
It was the first big threat to the fragile peace that had existed, like an echoing silence, in the wake of the Reaper war. But for Jen the politics was too much. She switched to KahjeOne and watched another documentary milk the Shepard story for all it was worth. Maybe it was too much to expect the galaxy to just move on, but they got more exaggerated and more maudlin every year. It was stupid, really – nobody was going to top the al-Jilani biography and nobody seemed to try, but you could guarantee an audience for another melodramatic retelling of the saga.  
  
A few weeks ago Jen had seen the Commander on the TV; she seemed to have shed the war years, grinning, engaging with the host. It was the first interview in a long while – the Commander was somewhat reclusive these days. Jen had taken the whole afternoon off to watch it, just because she felt like she had to. It was strange what that titan of a woman’s face could do even after all this time. It was like being back in the refugee quarter all over again, watching a warrior sidle past and give a glance full of all the pity in the universe.  
  
Jen had known her parents weren’t coming back then, in that one look– it had just taken a while to admit it to herself. _Plenty of those thoughts, thanks very much._ She jolted herself physically out of her headspace and  pushed her hair back (blue this month, on a whim). She found a thin silver necklace in the top drawer of her dresser – rarely worn, special. It slipped around her neck and she stood up, giving herself the once over. Collared shirt, slightly flared semi-formal trousers, her hair tied back tight. A uniform, comfortable and supposedly effortless.  
  
She grabbed her Port Authority ID from her desk, slipped into her coat and left, half shimmying on a handbag as she locked the door behind her. Jennifer Murray was the proud owner of the pokiest little flat in the Zakera Ward – but it was close to a transit stop, it had a shower with enough pressure to strip your skin off (just how she liked), and it faced out, through the nebula and towards the stars. The little courtyard gardens were nice, but she wanted a view of everything.  
  
Her ID gave her free travel across the Citadel – it was supposed to be thanks for helping keep the transit system running, but it was really because they didn’t get paid much and C-Sec wanted to throw them a bone. Jen was the voice you heard on your way into the restricted docks –her dulcet tones led in hundreds of freighters per shift. Some of the regular C-Sec fliers said she should do announcements or something, but she was maybe eighty per cent sure they were just trying to hit on her. Mostly, she was just good at staying calm, even at the end of a twelve hour shift when her left earpiece was blasting epithets at her. Jennifer was legendary for her restraint.  
  
She swiped her way through barriers and onto the tube, gathering her handbag close to her out of habit. Jen was cagey, paranoid and hard to know, but that was more readily forgiven in a postwar galaxy. A lot of people had reasons to react badly. Once, soon after the war when she was first living alone, she’d been at the supermarket stocking up on basics when one of the big fridges went down – all of a sudden, a bizarre artificial scream filled the store. For maybe five seconds she had heard that godawful tone, and it was the Reaper tone, that horrific metallic shriek. She felt herself freeze and go very cold, and it was a few seconds before she realised she wasn’t the only one. An aisle full of shoppers, suddenly rendered childlike in fear over a _bloody fridge_. They’d laughed together, but it had stuck with her – the whole galaxy was traumatised, it felt like.  
  
She remembered the time soon after the war, when they were first rebuilding the Citadel. Just the clearing of corpses took over half a year; it took them a few weeks to even find everyone, hidden in disused viaducts or abandoned apartments with no knowledge that it had been over for days. After the relay network came back up the aid flooded in, and then they had to tether the Citadel back to where it had been (a matter of years). Everyone had agreed that it must be rebuilt, even though it would’ve been more logical not to. It just seemed important, it seemed obvious.  
  
Jen had been there for it all – she and Serrus hid in a warehouse on one of the wards while the Citadel was harvested around them. They’d been some of the first to be discovered by rescue teams, and she could remember being perched on a metal crate while quarantine crews hauled out these huge truckloads full of death. And then the transit came back on, and the electricity – the electricity had come before the water came back regularly. And then area by area the Citadel had been reclaimed, albeit a bit uglier and less regular than before. The Keepers had helped, as they always did.  
  
The tube shuddered to a stop and she filtered out with the other passengers. The Presidium was more accessible than it had been before the Reapers – many of the apartments had been split in the immediate aftermath of the Reaper attack, to provide double the housing, and they’d just never been un-split. The process was slowly being reversed by opportunistic property owners hoping to make a quick return on credits spent, but it was uneven. That was how Serrus had a home up here; he’d basically just sat in it and refused to leave, and eventually the reborn Council had sided with the squatters.  
  
She climbed a few flights of shallow stairs towards Serrus’ home and rang the doorbell, adjusting her hair reflexively. She heard the door buzz and let herself in.  
  
The whole place was half-lit, bathed in gentle yellowish light. In the centre of his apartment a large table stood, all the other furniture cleared out of the way – he’d opened up his balcony doors and the view of the ring, even from this low, was beautiful. Jen could see two packs of cards, three bottles of wine (one dextro, already half open), and four of her best friends.  
  
“Finally! C’mon, sit down, you’ve got some catching up to do if you want to synchronise the drunkenness.” Sophie flashed her a grin and began pouring out a glass.  
“I pre-gamed through my work shift, I’m fine –“ Jen smirked, and then snorted and rolled her eyes at a stare from Jarud – “Bloody hell, I’m kidding.”  
Jarud frowned at her nonetheless, his huge black eyes shifting indignantly. Jen mollified him with a kiss to the forehead, then beamed a wide smile at the broad, stock-shouldered Turian who’d entered the room. People talked about chosen family and they talked about biological family, but Jen’s was neither.  
  
She took her accustomed seat, slumping and pushing her fingers through her hair. Serrus would deal first, as he always did on nights like these. On the smooth pine sideboard a metre behind him sat a cluster of photos, arranged at neat right angles to precise degrees. The photos on them spoke variously of their lives together – nights out, Serrus’ retirement do, pics from the original rebuild effort, a younger Jen leaning against a pillar, covered in dust and the debris of construction. The most important picture, though, was right at the front. She was at her youngest – barely fifteen, standing alone in a refugee bay at the desk of a Turian guard who would become her second father.


End file.
